


Perfect

by Lady_in_Red



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Family Fluff, Happy Ending, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 10:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11484384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Mike and Ginny get their happily ever after.Sequel to Puppy Love and Hearts Don't Break Around Here.





	Perfect

Mike knew he was in trouble when Ginny started to cry. If he’d just stuck to what he’d written… well, it was too late for what ifs. The vows he’d painstakingly written and edited and scratched out and written again had blown away in the sea breeze right before Will Baker walked his sister up the rose-petal strewn aisle. 

And when the time came, Mike had slipped the ring onto her finger and blurted out that he’d thought the best part of his life was behind him before he met her, and now he knew it was still ahead. Ginny had clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, and Mike reached out to wipe away her tears. 

They stood barefoot in the warm sand, the sunset painting Ginny’s gauzy white dress gold while she sniffled and muttered that she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. A few feet away, Chewie panted and whined and strained against her leash, held firmly by Gabriel Sanders. The dog never could stand to see Ginny upset. 

Evelyn, always prepared, handed Ginny a handkerchief. While she blotted the tears from her eyes, Mike waited nervously until she was looking at him again, her lip trembling and her eyes still wet. 

“You’re my life, Gin,” Mike started, and she bit her lip to stop herself from tearing up again. “You walked onto that field and you changed everything. You made me a husband again and a father when I never thought I’d be either. I don’t deserve you, I don’t know why you put up with me, but I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me.”

Ginny’s eyes went wide, and suddenly Mike heard the whispers among their guests. He risked a glance and cursed under his breath. So much for their secret. He turned his gaze back on his bride and shrugged. “Sorry.” At least he hadn’t bragged that he’d gotten her barefoot and pregnant before they were even married.

Ginny just smiled at him. Her pregnancy wasn’t obvious, not this early, but keeping it a secret from most of their friends and family had become difficult. She’d been sick frequently, not just in the mornings, and some smells made her so nauseous they’d had to avoid restaurants she used to love. Walks on the beach had become impossible. The smell of the seaweed that washed up on certain beaches made her queasy. Otherwise, she was a total cliché. Ginny glowed. There was no other word for it. 

And Mike couldn’t stop smiling, not today. Not since Ginny put on his ring, and definitely not since a smiley face had popped up on the pregnancy test she’d taken against the clinic’s advice. Even with the pressure of planning a wedding in two months while Ginny rehabbed her knee enough to walk up the aisle unassisted, Mike couldn’t remember a happier time in his life. 

Evelyn had worked miracles to book the famous Hotel del Coronado during the All-Star break, when all their friends could attend. A gauzy tent screened them from paparazzi while the waves crashed along the beach only a few yards away, and later they would move inside for the reception. Evelyn hadn’t even blinked when Ginny asked for a wedding cake shaped like Petco Park or the Sanders boys walking up the aisle with Chewie. She’d just done it.  

“Are you ready, dear?” the minister asked Ginny gently.

She nodded, her chin tipping up and her eyes determined. Mike had seen that look hundreds of times, still remembered it from sixty feet away and a lifetime ago. Had it really only been four years since she was called up?

Ginny turned to Evelyn and traded the handkerchief for Mike’s ring. As she slipped the heavy platinum band onto his finger, he could feel the fresh engraving inside ( _ 436 _ ) scratch against his skin. 

“I thought I knew you,” she said with a little laugh, “when I was 14 and watching you on TV. I knew your stance and your swing and the look on your face when you knew you’d hit one out of the park. And I thought I knew you when I was 23 and I walked onto that field with you.” She shook her head. “But I’m still learning, every day, a little more about you. I’ve known Mike Lawson the ballplayer, the captain, the friend and the boyfriend, and I love all of them. I can’t wait to know you as a husband and a father. I can’t wait another minute to be your wife.”

Mike tugged Ginny into his arms, kissed her smiling mouth without waiting for the minister’s permission. She was laughing into the kiss, their guests already clapping as the minister pronounced them husband and wife. All Mike wanted to do was pick her up, knees and back be damned, and carry her to their suite in the hotel, but he had one more surprise left for her.

Under the dome of the Crown Room hours later, Ginny and Mike took the floor for their first dance. Making sure that Ginny faced away from the deejay, Mike swept his bride out onto the dance floor. He could see their photographer snapping photos, and Evelyn was taking video on her phone. 

Ginny started smiling as the deejay announced the bride and groom’s first dance.  She had left most of the wedding details up to Evelyn, but one of her few requests was “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran for their first dance. 

“I found a love, for me,” the singer crooned as Ginny softly sang the words along with him. “Darling, just dive right in, and follow my lead. I found a girl, beautiful and sweet. Well, I never knew you were the someone waiting for me.”

It took longer than Mike expected for her blissful expression to change, confusion wrinkling her brow. And then she risked a glance over her shoulder and froze. A ginger-haired, tattooed guy stood in front of the deejay’s table, singing and playing guitar. Mike had called in favors, made a large charitable donation, and paid for a last-minute plane ticket when the singer’s original flight was canceled, but Ed Sheeran was playing their wedding reception. 

“Mike? How did you…” The look on Ginny’s face was worth every minute of aggravation, even groveling to Amelia for help. 

Mike shrugged like it had been nothing. “I thought you wanted this song.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but then she grinned again and kissed him eagerly, her fingers in his hair. “I love you.” 

Mike wanted to tease her more, but her eyes slipped closed and she rested her head against his shoulder, swaying to the music. Mike sang along softly in her ear when Sheeran reached the verse that always reminded Mike most of them. “I found a love, to carry more than just my secrets. To carry love, to carry children of our own.”

He would never forget seeing that first ultrasound, and how happy they’d been. How happy they were tonight. And this was just the beginning.

 

* * *

  
  
“That, princess, is crowding the plate. Now Mama’s going to teach him why he shouldn’t do that.” Mike told the baby even though she seemed far more interested in pulling on his beard than in the action on the field.

“Isn’t she a little young for baseball lessons?” Evelyn asked skeptically at their side. They weren’t the only ones standing by the window of the family suite, but the other WAGs kept their distance. Some still weren’t totally comfortable with a former player joining their ranks. 

Mike scowled at her. “That’s how you ended up with soccer players.”

They both watched Ginny for a moment. She’d been so nervous this morning, making her first start after a full year out between her knee surgery and the pregnancy. Mike wasn’t worried. Ginny hadn’t lost any speed or accuracy on her pitches. Her balance was back to normal, even if her uniform shirt was still a little tight across her breasts. She threw high and inside, making the batter rock back on his heels. Strike one. 

“She looks good. Better than I did four months after delivery,” Evelyn noted with only a hint of jealousy.

“Ginny had a lot of help. From you. I don’t know what we would have done without you,” Mike reminded her. 

“It was nothing,” Evelyn scoffed, but it wasn’t even close to nothing. While Ginny’s mother had visited for a week after the delivery, and Jackie Lawson had come by a couple of times for an afternoon, Evelyn was the one who’d stayed over at their house on nights when Ginny was overwhelmed and teary and no one was sleeping.

His daughter squirmed in the carrier strapped to his chest, headbutting his collarbone in her efforts to settle in for a nap. Mike patted Ruby’s back and kissed the top of her fuzzy little head. “Are her eyes open?” 

Evelyn eyed the baby and nodded. “Getting sleepy but not there yet.” 

Mike sighed and turned his attention back to his wife. She was shaking her head at whatever signal Livan had given. Another signal, and she nodded. Mike bit back a curse as Ginny threw and the batter connected, the hit sailing out into center field, where Blip neatly caught it. Mike wanted to go sit down, rock Ruby to sleep and get her tucked away in the stroller, but he could see one of the cameras below still trained on him. As long as Ginny was on the mound, FoxSports would keep cutting to reaction shots of her husband and infant daughter. 

She was by no means the first woman to return to professional sports after having a baby, but the media just couldn’t get enough of the story. They’d even done a few interviews with various magazines and a morning news show to try to head off the constant questions, but it hadn’t done much good. Photographers had been following them around since they left the hospital. What had finally made a difference was a joint statement from their agents reminding the press that while they were public figures, children were not. The barrage of celebrity moms offering support on Twitter and through their agents had taken Ginny by surprise. 

Mike wasn’t surprised. His wife was incredibly popular. Nearly a year off hadn’t reduced the number of kids in the stands sporting Baker jerseys. He shifted Ruby in her carrier, making sure the camera caught the 43 on her back, the plump curve of her rosy brown cheek and her wide hazel eyes, the dark brown curls just starting to grow on her head. As soon as she fell asleep, he’d put her in the stroller, get her sweaty weight off his chest and rest his back. Ruby, while obviously the most beautiful little girl ever born in the history of the world (her mother, of course, was the second most beautiful), was a little tank. She ate voraciously and looked like a tiny sumo wrestler when clad in just a diaper. 

A soft little yawn reached his ears, and Mike felt Ruby relax against him. Just in time. A soft whine behind him made Mike turn around. Chewie wanted his attention. While it was technically a “bring your dog to the ballpark” day, an MLB-wide promotion the last few years to boost ticket sales, no one had expected Mike to bring his dog up to the family suite. 

Mike pulled out his camera and snapped a quick photo for Chewie’s 300,000 Instagram followers. The dog wore a Padres kerchief around her neck, and was sitting patiently while her favorite person in the entire world gnawed on her ear. 

Lucas Baker Lawson, the calm, easygoing counterpoint to his sister’s noisy attention-seeking. Smaller and quieter in the womb and in the world, born second because Ruby always needed to be first. Mike had suggested to Ginny more than once that Ruby had been conceived in the suite at the ballpark while her brother was the result of the doctor’s careful screening and procedures. He had more of his father’s coloring, lighter skin and already a hint of freckles wherever the sun touched him, but his mother’s dark eyes and dimples. Ginny already despaired of how girls would flock to him as he grew up. 

Much of Luke’s face was covered by the dog’s ear and his own fat fist, so Mike didn’t worry about clearing the image with Ginny before he posted it. 

“You have a good nap, little man?” he asked, and his son dropped the dog’s ear and reached for Mike, a drooly, gummy grin lighting his face. Luke had drifted off to sleep right after Ginny nursed him in the clubhouse before the game. Ruby, who’d eaten first, had preferred to loudly and stinkily poop while Livan tried to make her laugh. The look on Duarte’s face had been worth changing that diaper. 

Evelyn deftly plucked the sleeping Ruby out of Mike’s carrier and rocked her for a minute before settling her into the second seat of the double stroller. Chewie sighed loudly and lay back down, guarding his second favorite person. Ruby adored snuggling up to her furry partner in crime, while Chewie fussed over Ruby and kept her from getting into trouble now that the baby had discovered how to roll across the room. 

Knowing the cameras might catch him checking Luke’s diaper if he stayed where he was, Mike took the boy into the suite’s bathroom and changed him. Four months ago he’d bungled this task on a regular basis, but now he was a pro. And strange as it seemed even to him, when he returned to the window of the suite, the Padres now at bat, Mike didn’t mind being up here instead of down in the dugout. 

He’d heard all the Mr. Mom jokes, and the sportscasters who thought that Mike and the babies traveling with Ginny to Arizona had made her less focused on the game. Even worse were the women who looked down at Ginny for returning to the team eight weeks after giving birth. None of them had any idea how hard Mike and Ginny worked to make sure that Ginny spent as much time with the twins as possible. She was still nursing both babies, even though it would have been much easier to switch to formula, because it gave her one on one time with both babies. And while she’d lost a lot of sleep the last four months, Ginny was still just as focused on the mound as she’d ever been.

Ginny had the life Mike had always wanted. The game. The marriage. The kids. And while Mike’s phase two hadn’t gone at all to plan, he wouldn’t change a thing. He had everything he wanted, right here in this ballpark. 


End file.
